Free The Last Enchantments by Charles Finch Page A

to the same high school and same college, Bush and I. I think I hated him even more than I hated the suicide bombers, young idiot kids, with who knew what mythology of early death and sorrow behind them, with who knew what loss traced into their rage.
    I admit that even greater than my public anger was my own selfish anger. I had been born into a generation doomed politically by its stupid, credulous, narcissistic parents. These baby boomers! They were the reason Europeans grew wary now at my accent. They had squandered my good name, and the planet, too; they had squandered their own parents’ legacy of stoicism in their welter of sexual and narcotic self-indulgence; in a few years they would squander into their maws the whole economy of the world and become the only American generation better off than both the parents and their children; and for all that they believed they had the moral high ground! They talked about Selma, Birmingham, and Vietnam, while my friends and I, brighter I think, certainly more responsible, at ease with the endowments of sex and drugs, smart, ambitious—we got to walk in pointless, well-meaning marches against Iraq, global warming, whatever. I had to live guiltily in the half-shadow of those my age who died at war, while all I could do was run off to Oxford, from the real world into a dream world, a coward with his self-righteousness and his anger, doing nothing about it now that the campaign was over. A hider.
    Anger and anger and anger—and behind it disappointment, in the world and myself. That was what I felt when I thought about the campaign now.
    There was no point in saying it just then.
    *   *   *
    “Aren’t we supposed to go back to the lawns for the bell ringing?” asked Anneliese. “It’s starting soon, too!”
    “Fleet time,” I said, yawning.
    “I need to stretch my legs,” said Sophie. “I’ll be right back.”
    It was colder and my head had cleared. I watched her go, her long, lean body falling into the shadows. After a decent interval, I said, “I’ll see what happened to Soph,” and Tom winked at me. I frowned at him.
    She was on the phone when I found her, and I noticed, with some surprise, that she was smoking.
    She hung up just as I was reaching her. “You’ve caught me,” she said repentantly. “But I’m glad it’s you.”
    “Can I have one?”
    “If you promise not to tell.”
    “Promise.” I lit the cigarette she gave me, cupping my hand around the match to keep it out of the wind. “Aren’t you glad you came out to Hall tonight?”
    “I am glad, I am. I spent too long worrying about Jack for my own good.”
    “That’s your ex?”
    “Mm.” After that answer she went silent, looking into my eyes for a period that grew less and less excusable. I found her so beautiful, painfully beautiful, her hazel eyes, her long and thick hair, with a thousand rich shades of copper, brown, auburn, and blond in it, falling around her bare throat, flying up around her face in the cold night, the faint scent of it creating some previously absent intimacy between us.
    Why is it that a person can seem just right to you, once in a while? Perhaps it wasn’t Sophie herself but everything about my life just then, being in Oxford, the heightened sense of chance, the distancing away from myself. As we stared at each other I felt sharpened by this newness into love. The stars and trees and wind, all of it.
    As I had known she would when she handed me the cigarette, she leaned in and kissed me.
    “Sorry,” she said after a moment. I started to say something halting, and she laughed and turned her head away. “I’m sorry. Really, that was stupid. I drank too much.”
    “I like you. I barely know you, but I—”
    “I like you too.”
    Oh fuck, I thought.
    *   *   *
    Here’s a story.
    Alison and I went to work for John Kerry at the same time, during the weeks before the Iowa caucuses. We were in Des Moines, operating from the state headquarters. At that